Samsung patents a phone with a camera notch

To the many who hate the emerging trend, Samsung remained a stalwart defender against the camera notch. Sadly, the notch-less phone brand is possibly numbering its days without the controversial design.

Spotted by Dutch blog Mobielkopen, a recent filing from China’s State Intellectual Property Office shows a potential Samsung phone with the notch design. Like most notched phones, the patented phone’s bezel is minimized to a sliver, thereby eliminating the home button entirely.

Thankfully, Samsung has filed another patent to go along with the curiously notched phone. The second patent offers a more conventional look at a Samsung phone.

Image source: Mobielkopen

The second phone doesn’t have a notch. However, it does completely eradicate any sign of a bezel. Hence, it doesn’t have a home button, front cameras, or any outward form of a sensor.

The back and sides don’t share much difference from Samsung’s usual design philosophy. Although, it does carry one key difference — no dedicated audio ports.

Both patents have their own fair share of departures from the designs that Samsung has always trusted. Despite their obvious differences, these patents are still only patents. Without a tangible product, these are just some of Samsung’s potential plans for the future.

Regardless, a notched Samsung phone will create shockwaves throughout the smartphone industry.

Facebook has a short film about their fight against misinformation

Facebook has something new for their users and it’s not a fun feature on the website or cute stickers for your story selfies. The biggest social networking site is determined to show that they’re serious about fighting misinformation may it be fake news or misleading posts, so they made a short film.

The Facing Factsshort film is an 11-minute video explaining the social network’s past and current thinking about managing posts on your News Feed, the challenges of keeping things neutral, and their methods of fighting off using machine learning.

Of course, they wanted to tell their side of the story and that’s why the short film also stresses the difficulties Facebook faces in handling two billion users.

“It would be impossible to review everything by hand.”

The film also acknowledges Facebook’s mistakes in the past and it’s pretty informative if you’re not familiar with Facebook’s saga against misinformation crawling on their platform. With the new measures they are doing, they wanted to convince users that they’re now doing the right thing until it’s time to change the strategy again.

The new Snapdragon 710 promises flagship specs for midrange phones

While everyone is hunting for the latest Snapdragon 845, Qualcomm’s midrange line is slowly catching up from behind. The newly announced Snapdragon 710 promises flagship features for the midrange phones that will eventually carry the chip.

Built on a 10nm chip, the Snapdragon 710 features timely upgrades for midrange AI, cameras, and display tech. According to Qualcomm VP for Product Management Kedar Kondap, the new processor offers “technologies and features previously only available in [their] premium-tier mobile platforms.”

In terms of AI, the chip ups the ante with a multi-core AI engine. Compared to previous models in the series, the Snapdragon 710 promises twice the performance for AI features. The upgrades will inevitably help with voice commands, gesture controls, and contextual photography.

Speaking of photography, the Snapdragon 710 includes the Qualcomm Spectra 250 image signal processor, which enhances camera tech. This hopes to improve the camera’s stabilization, low light capabilities, and noise reduction. This includes the popular AR emojis rapidly growing across the industry.

Also, for the first time, the Snapdragon midrange series will support 4K HDR viewing. The feature brings the best out of the midrange sector’s limited screen capabilities. Hopefully, this also brings substantial upgrades to the types of screens available for the sector.

Additionally, the new Snapdragon model can maximize both connectivity and battery life. With a new Snapdragon X15 LTE modem, the chip can support up to 800Mbps of 4G download speed. Similarly, the chip’s optimized architecture can reduce power consumption by up to 20 percent. If that’s not enough, it also supports the new Quick Charge 4+, which drastically reduces charging time.

Starting now, Qualcomm has opened the Snapdragon 710 for phone makers worldwide. We can expect compatible phones by the second half of the year.

Apple, Xiaomi lead wearable market during the start of 2018

Smartwatches may not be as in demand as smartphones, but the top smartphone manufacturers are also in the lead in the wearable market. We’re talking about Apple and Xiaomi which both garnered 18 percent of the market share according to the latest data from Canalys.

Apple leads the whole wearable market during the first quarter of 2018 with 3.8 million shipments and most of these are the latest Watch Series 3. Xiaomi is close behind with 3.7 million shipments and their most popular watches are the basic Mi Band models.

Trailing behind is Fitbit with an 11 percent market share followed by Garmin with 7 percent. Huawei also made a significant 6 percent cut in the pie.

We might not feel it, but wearable shipments grew 35 percent compared to the same quarter last year with a total 20.5 million units. Full-blown smartwatches managed to grab 80 percent of the total revenue despite managing just 43 percent of the overall shipments.

It looks like the price is not an issue among wearable customers, especially for Apple clients. The Cupertino company’s key smartwatch is the LTE-enabled Watch 3 series which adds a new revenue stream because of the data subscription it requires.

During the same quarter, Apple has 59 percent of the cellular-enabled smartwatch market while Garmin is the second smartwatch vendor.